Finding Meaning through Connection 4 – 5 Oct 2017

Compassionate Mental Health – Finding Meaning through Connection is our third gathering designed to inform, inspire and empower people living and working with mental distress.

Once again we’ve gathered influential speakers who are passionate about changing the script around mental health, challenging stigma and raising expectations.

Our aim is to bring together people and families with personal experience of mental health issues, frontline staff, commissioners, managers, clinicians, GPs, policymakers and Third Sector staff, to discuss what works for people recovering from a mental health crisis. We’ll discuss a range of approaches that move beyond a medical model, with a special focus on Open Dialogue, mindfulness and therapeutic communities.

Building on positive feedback from our event in March, we’ll go deeper into the issues we explore why finding meaning and purpose is so vital for recovery from trauma and mental distress. Our premise is that a mental health crisis must become a meaningful turning point and catalyst for change. The idea that mental illness is for life and will require life long medication is reductionist, and doesn’t give people hope that recovery is possible.

This October the beautiful Fforest in West Wales will be our home for two days, where we’ll create a feeling of community. Let’s leave behind our professional and personal roles and labels so we can move forward together to create positive change.

This is a gathering and unconference, but there are key learning outcomes associated with moving towards a more coproductive, psychosocial approach to thinking about mental health and designing and delivering services. Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of the shifting paradigm of mental health care.

Together we’ll explore emerging themes in mental health, including:

Compassion, mindfulness and Open Dialogue

How to exercise our inner strength to resource ourselves and others

Finding meaningin mental distress and psychosis

Breakdown as opportunity for breakthrough and growth

Enabling the shift towards a more democratic approach, that focuses on the whole person and building resilience

Building equity and understanding between people delivering and designing mental health services, and those with personal experience

Learning how we form authentic relationships, learn to listen deeply, and feel safe to share our difficulties

Creating safe healing spaces in our services and communities, for people to talk about suicidal thoughts

Compassion – towards self and others – is a skill that can be learned. Our experienced teachers will guide you in some basic practices, and share their personal stories of mental distress and recovery.

Walk away with

Inspiration about the possibility of recovery from listening to other people’s stories

New ways to resource ourselves & others by building resilience and self compassion

Confidence to transform difficult emotions and calm our inner critic

Lessons in listening deeply and developing presence

Understanding the value of finding meaning and purpose in mental health crisis

Why compassion, trust and connection is so important for service improvement

Why should you attend?

We’ll be exchanging ideas, lessons learned and best practices with thought leaders and experts by experience. All involved are already influencing change in their field. There will be pauses during the day for reflection and feedback, and your participation is valued.

What it isn’t

This isn’t an anti-psychiatry event, or one that proposes a right way to recovery, self management or service improvement. But – along with many other critical voices – we are calling for a radical shift in the way people understand and approach mental health issues.

Our goal is to be part of the global call for better, safer mental health services for all. We hope to do this by building bridges and growing understanding that people in crisis need more than just medicine. Feeling connected, finding meaning in crisis, and sharing tools for stability are all vital for a whole person approach.

There needs to be better funding for mental health services in all settings, and there will be opportunities during the day to share ideas for the future. Our hope is that we can all move forward together into a more collaborative, compassionate chapter. As one of our Speakers, Elisabeth Svanholmer, says:

My truth is A truth, not THE truthI share my truthin the hope that you will find your truth and share it with me.Then maybe we can get excited about the things we have in commonbut more importantlywe might learn somethingfrom our differences. My truth is that there is no truthjust endless possibilities

Mental health is everyone’s business

Mental illness is one of the biggest challenges of our age. The Mental Health Foundation says that one in four adults and one in ten children are likely to have a mental health problem in any year, and the economic cost to the UK is estimated at an annual 70 to 100 billion pounds.

“There’s ‘Them’ and there’s ‘Us’. We are well, happy and safe. They are mentally ill and dangerous. Is this really true? Or is the uncomfortable truth that there’s a continuum, a scale along which we all slide back and forth during our lives. When we separate ourselves we hurt those labelled as sick, ill, even mad, but we also hurt ourselves…” Only Us Campaign

What people say

“We all experience problems with our mental health at points in our lives. What we often want most at those times is to be met with a compassionate response. Unfortunately that isn’t always what happens in our mental health services. Conferences like this are badly needed to explore why that is and to inspire change so that our services become places of compassion, comfort and hope in dark times.” Anne Cooke, Consultant Clinical Psychologist